OPM proposal would increase pay for thousands of feds

The addition of four new locality pay areas would provide thousands of federal employees with increased pay to compensate for living in an expensive area. (Getty Images)

The Office of Personnel Management July 6 published a proposal to establish four new General Schedule locality pay areas in a move that could see about 62,000 federal employees receive pay increases for 2019.

Locality pay areas are calculated by measuring the cost of living in certain parts of the country against the standard government pay schedule and these designations provide a pay bump to those employees living in particularly expensive areas.

The Federal Salary Council recommended in 2017 and 2018 that these four locations be added to the current 46 locality pay locations across the U.S.

Adding the four new areas could also have an impact on feds in other locality pay areas, as existing practice for locality pay increases in the federal government is to allocate the same amount of funds established for pay increases across the larger number of employees in the event of additions.

“Implementing higher locality pay rates in the four new locality pay areas could thus result in relatively lower pay increases for employees in existing locality pay areas than they would otherwise receive,” the notice said.

Interested members of the public can provide comments on the proposal to the Federal eRulemaking Portal or email pay-leave-policy@opm.gov.